FOV: Field of View. Optimal/real settings?

Mirrors in real life cars often/generally have some optical distortion (they are convex) to alter their field of view, thus making them more useful - but it certainly affects the perception of distances. "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear". But I know what you mean - some of them seem pretty extreme in simulators!

I noticed last night the virtual mirror in iRacing has an FoV setting...

Nice that you could get your screen closer. 3 degrees is still something... I'd like to get mine close enough to go from ~35 to 38... But I don't think it's gonna happen.

 

Thank you Edgec0m for your extended answer, ad yes it help clarifying it, to some extent. LOL.
I found a pdf document called : Field_of_View_Explained while searching for answer. I recommend it as a good read on this subject. It make sense to me.
One thing I am certain of now, is that it is a step in the right direction for a more rewarding and closer to reality SIM experience.
As some other poster wrote, their is no turning back.

 

Could you post the link to that pdf, please. I'm interested, maybe I learn something else in with that pdf.

 

PM sent!

 

I recently went from a single 27" 16:9 screen to triple 19" 4:3 screen. They are almost as tall as the 27", but combined are quite a bit wider. With the 35degree angle on teh sides I now have VERY nice view and some peripheral vision. Had teh mathematically correct FOV in both setups, and still stiple screens make a big difference. The horisontal FOV is just so much wider with triples that wrap around you, and the app in AC makes it so easy to get it right.
Just remember that the bezel compensation is AC is the COMBINED bezel of the two screens, not the bezel of each screen like in iR. Took me a while to figure out why my displays didn't align properly.

 

Don't you guys, especially with single monitors, find that you feel like you are going at snails pace in AC with the lower FOVs?

I have a 27 inch screen and find that I have to have the FOV at at least 50 otherwise I feel like I'm going slower into corners than I am and end up under steering off.

 

This is why car games and flight sims etc will just be infinitely better with a VR headset.

The FOV will just be right, no distortion, full coverage, etc etc... it'll be rather amazing.

Yes you'll look like a weirdo haha, but who cares?

They just need to make them HD enough

Dave

 

With a single screen it feels a bit slow, but not like a snail. You get used to it, like you do with everything else.

 

Yeah, as above - the lower FoV values absolutely greatly reduce the sensation of speed. Especially if you have been accustomed to a much bigger value for a long time. As above, you get used to it. and fairly quickly in my experience. But that said, I was having a blast sim driving with an inaccurate FoV for many years!

 

I agree. I run the default FOV here and it feels nice. A good blend of accuracy and speed sensation for one screen.

I guess an issue with the 3 screens is, what are the side screens displaying? Do they represent a 45deg angled view, or steeper, or shallower? Should your head be looking at them perpendicular or at a shallow angle etc?

For me 3 screens is nice but the side screens literally just give you a cue to the motion/speed and I always worry that since my screens are set up for work that using them gets the projections wrong (I have gaps between screens and the bezels don't line up etc)


29 FOV is about right for reality here but it's far too narrow I can't see anything. Personally I start to miss the vertical FOV. I suppose the solution is 3 x 50" LCD screens with thin bezels haha.

Or just a HD VR kit when they arrive... please be soon

Dave

 

Calculated my FOV , supposedly I should be running 51 , but I far prefer around 56-60. It's not really about what you're supposed to have but what you're confortable with. within limits of course. I wouldn't stray too far from recommended FOV but if you're 5-6 wider than it, it's fine IMO.

 

Yes, it feels like that, although the lower FOV is more correct. With triples you get a massive boost in feeling of speed because of the stuff flying past in the side view. Like here (just imagine that the sides are angled toward you, lol):

 

Hi! Thanks to this very useful discussion I changed my FOV to a correct one too, after years of playing with a wider one! (I never thought about these things, I was used to set, with triple screen, a FOV that allowed me to see the mirror on the right...). And yes, you have to relearn everything, but it's true: it adds a lot on the immersion. Finally a U turn is a U turn like in real life, and you have to look at your side and not only to move your eyes a little to see the apex!

But, like someone else (Sriple Tix) pointed out in a previous page, now there are some problems with the FPS. With the new correct FOV the FPS are 10-20 less than before. This should not be an issue at the moment; I still have about 100 FPS (HDR off, AA4x, AF4x, Shadow high. I also tried to lower down AA and AF at 2x so that I have an average of 125/135fps), but the frame rate is now really unstable and there is stuttering even though the minimum FPS are never less than 80/90 (according to the FPS in game App).

(...Obviously before changing FOV everything used to run smoothly.)

Moreover, maybe worse, a lot of objects in the distance (trees, bushes, meters signs etc.) appear late on the screen, only when I am already closer to them.

I'm absolutely not an expert... and I'm asking if this could be a problem related to the Video memory, maybe not able to charge all the textures in time (I have 3 GB!)? One could argue that the Textures to charge are the same, both with a wider and with a narrower FOV... but, playing for the first time with a low FOV, I had exactly the same impression of the user edgec0m. He wrote: ".... The environment certainly looks better.Firstly more natural in its fit on the screen (less distortion), but somehow also a lot of things just seem "higher res""

So now I wonder: is it possible that, appearing many objects bigger and nearer to the eyes with the new FOV, the game has really to charge Hi-Res Textures not needed before and for that the Memory is now not enough?

Hope this is not to much off Topic!

 

I would most likely say it has nothing to do with the FOV. Objects popping up is normally caused through too less LOD(Level of detail) Stages.
The unsmooth experience may be caused through too less RAM. I see, you have just 4GB.

 

That is pretty sweeeeeet. Nice driving too

 

Y’know, I didn’t notice any big change in FPS when I decreased the FoV (from ~58 to ~35), but in fairness, I was changing quite a lot of stuff/settings, so it’s hard to say in my case.


However, I did previously hypothesise; “…the fact that with a wider FOV (bigger number) the screen often gets taken up with more of the dash/car - which is not really moving or doing much from a graphical/processing consideration.”

Since you’re talking about about ~10% reduction in FPS, the above “dash/interior” might be a factor (depending on where you have your seat/eye position in the game, and how much interior/dash of the car is filling the visible pixels, assuming you are driving from cockpit view…)


One thing’s for sure, you’ve still got plenty of FPS, but if there’s stuttering and it’s not smooth, that really hurts the experience.


As for objects popping up – I was changing the “world detail” and noticed that on a low setting some far away objects were being drawn/popping up visibly. What setting do you have for the world detail?


Still, it could well be a topic/issue you should search this forum for to see if others are experiencing it, and if not, might be worth reporting for investigation.


Perhaps you are right, that on a narrower FoV, the textures actually draw to a higher level of detail on a narrower FoV. I don’t know. Likewise, I’m not an expert.


Re: system RAM - Has anyone had a look how much memory/system RAM “acs.exe” uses when the game is running?


Incidentally, just after AC early access came out, I went from 32bit Win7 with 4gb RAM to 64bit and 16Gb RAM, (and a faster/better SSD hard drive) and it made no difference to my FPS numbers, but it certainly did reduce dips in the frame-rate, and it did improve overall smoothness. So BMASTER’s point above may be very valid.


I think my graphics card is the bottleneck in my case. I do still get some screen tearing, but that’s a little different to stuttering (V-Sync off).

 

Here is a link that some of you may find interesting. I know it is for a different sim, but the info is great.

http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/93-Setting-up-your-rFactor-FOV-Tutorial

 

There is a post above mentioning a formula: 2 * arctan (0.5 * w / d) with w being the screen width and d the viewing distance. I tried Google to find what arctan is, I understand it is a formula, but I am not clear which one. It says it means the inverse tangent function, what does that mean in English?
Can anyone enlighten us (me) on what artcan is and how to use it?
I find it interesting in the way that you could use either a distance or a FOV as a starting point to estimate the right combination.
We absolutely should have an application like this built into AC.
.

 

+1 for this suggestion

 

@BMASTER and @edgecOm: Thank you very much for the answer!
I did some test to avoid to say something wrong.

I tried to measure the RAM consumption during the game. It seems I have still a little less then 1gb free when AC is running. So I do not think this could be the problem. (When I wrote about Memory size I was referring to the video Memory of the Gpu 3GB).
Anyway, I agree, it's time to go for a 64bit OS and to rise up the size of the RAM. I already have a new ssd ready for the new OS.

Yes, I use cockpit view and you might be right regarding the reduction in FPS.
I also have occasional tearing and, to be honest, also stuttering is not present all the time. I tried to cap the fps and it seems better (but I have to test a little more to be sure). I do not want to put VSync on because it could cause input lag (there is a thread about it in the forum).

I actually also decreased "world detail" to medium in order to increase FPS. But even with them turned to Maximum (with only a little decrease in FPS) I have objects popping up on the screen.
I returned to the old FOV setting (I actually dont know the value, because I use the triple screen App, changing only the size of the screen and the app did all the calculations) and I noticed that the popping object were still there! The difference was that they were a lot in the distance and I didn't notice them before because they were too little and too far away. So I always had the problem and it is not related to the FOV at all! I will have to "investigate it".

I learned this is a common problem also for other games. In other games they increased the "View distance" in some .ini file to solve it, but this will though drastically reduce performance since this will affect everything that renders in the game.

I am quite a lot off topic now... but does anyone knows how to do it in AC?